‘Don’t you find her a problem, being Italian and everything? Don’t you find the language barrier a problem? Don’t you think you’d be better off with someone who was English and more your own age?’
These were Bridget Jones’s questions in her hilarious, fictional interview with Colin Firth, asking about his real-life then girlfriend, Livia Giuggioli.
The exchange is in the second novel, The Edge Of Reason, when B flies to Rome to interview her crush for The Independent, a scene understandably omitted from the movie, as Colin Firth went on to play Mark Darcy, based on Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy.
Bridget’s creator, Helen Fielding, was clearly a superfan, as is every superannuated woman with a pulse. How close Firth’s personality is to his fictional alter ego we don’t know. Is he unable to express his emotions?
Livia may have found him to be a cold fish – after marrying him and the couple having three sons (Will, Luca and Matteo) – which prompted her into an affair with Italian journalist Marco Brancaccia.
The Firths got divorced after 22 years (Colin briefly took her back; you see, what a kind man!) and Livia is now with climate activist Callum Grieve, who doubtless wears hair shirts, not wet, white, cotton, flouncy ones.
Firth of course is now with someone more his own age: screenwriter Maggie Cohn, 63.
Livia Firth with her MBE, which she was awarded in 2019 for her campaigning work for garment workers
Colin Firth’s ex tearing up her MBE certificate in protest at the UK ‘appeasing’ President Trump
So, we all knew we disliked Livia, anyway. Not only did she snare the love god who emerged like a dripping seal from a lake, prompting many rewinds of the VHS cassette by middle-aged women made reckless by too much Chardonnay.
Now, Livia has dramatically returned her MBE and torn up her certificate in protest at the UK ‘appeasing’ President Trump.
Colin Firth fans across the nation are now screaming: ‘You should never have been given an award, anyway. You bagged the ultimate prize! What more could you possibly want or need?’
The reason Livia, 56, returned her honour – awarded in 2019 for her campaigning work for garment workers – was in protest at Donald Trump’s recent State visit to the UK hosted with much pomp by King Charles.
In an Instagram post last week, she displayed the handwritten letter she was about to post to St James’s Palace, in which she whinnied: ‘Last week’s display showed me nothing of those values I thought King Charles upheld – or its spirit.
Rather, a frightening and cowardly display of appeasing someone who stands for the obliteration of the natural world and the most vulnerable people on earth.’
All very John Lennon then, who similarly returned his insignia with a handwritten note protesting against Britain’s support for its US ally then mired in the Vietnam war.
Colin Firth and Livia in 2010
I can imagine Trump muttered on hearing this news, ‘Livia’s livid? Who in God’s name is she?’ While Charles will doubtless recycle the paper letter with good grace – a process Livia is very keen on, given she is that kind of gal.
Yes, you guessed it, Livia is all about not saving her marriage, but saving the planet. After she snared Darcy (I’m sorry, I can barely type those words; poor Lizzie Bennett! Poor Bridget!) in 1997 (they met on a film set the year before; Livia was working as a producer for which Colin loved her, just as she was), she soon hunkered down into the typical non-job guilt-trip of someone who marries a rich movie star.
Yes, you guessed it, she started selling eco-friendly, dolphin-resuscitating fashion such as bags made from plastic carrier bags (and eco light bulbs, wallpaper and bamboo towels; does anyone actually like bamboo towels?) from her taupe and beige boutique in Chiswick, south-west London.
The designers were mostly her West London friends Eloise Grey, for example. Livia doubtless got the idea from another rich wife, Ali Hewson, married to U2 frontman Bono – she gave the world its first organic jeans.
When I visited Livia’s shop, Eco Age, in 2009 it was empty of customers and closed last year. No wonder when the price tags were enough to give anyone a heart attack. It did feature, though, the ubiquitous vertical garden, a green wall on the outside to counteract the nasty, naughty pollution of Chiswick High Road. Of course, Livia explained the criticism away.
‘If you are privileged, you have to be responsible,’ she told me. Honestly, the accent; I’d marry her. ‘If you are a mother, why would you buy something that exploits children?’ She said that in Italy, recycling and making meals from scratch is second nature, to which I almost spat: ‘Well, go back there then!’
Busy in the basement, though, was her drop-dead gorgeous brother, Nicola, who was hard at it fashioning chandeliers and knick-knacks from foraged pieces of wood. I did consider briefly asking him to make me a lampshade, not to inject income into Colin Firth’s extended Italian family, but because he was so handsome and I wanted to linger longer.
Livia has a history of high-profile stunts. When accompanying her film star husband on the red carpet at premieres and to the BAFTAs, she would always wear a dress that had been recycled, made of milk bottle tops, for example, as if she were Val Singleton but far more beautiful (because she is stunning, another reason we hate her; she has legs coming up to any normal person’s armpit).
This latest stunt will have no meaningful impact whatsoever. She is fiddling while her entirely undeserved what-on-earth-was-Queen-Elizabeth-thinking honour burns
